My phantom
by The Sky Pirate Girl
Summary: "You love me, don't you?" he said, looking into her time-shattered, world-weary eyes. How peculiar, there was still someone who loved him in this world, even if it was just a phantom. "Somewhere in the future I will see you." Sirius/Hermione


Sometimes, she is the phantom that's haunting him – tired eyes, impossibly tired, as though she has seen all of time and all of it has fallen on her thin shoulders; a wistful smile through the shattered pieces of her soul.

_What is it that broke you so much?_ he wants to ask her ghost.

But she is always gone before he has the chance to say anything.

She never ages, nor dies – he has seen glimpses of this young woman throughout all his life and she never changes. Only her eyes.

.

Once, only once she spoke to him.

He had just lost his best friends and Aurors were hunting him and he knew he wouldn't hold them off for much longer. Rain-soaked, tired like her, broken like her (but he knew he'd never be as broken as those eyes), he asked the vision of her:

"Why do you haunt me?"

She smiled, as though seeing some kind of an irony and then caressed his cheek, so tenderly, as though he'd disappear behind a veil, as though he'd shatter into millions of pieces like she always did. "I want to save you, Sirius."

He laughed bitterly. "I'm afraid it's too late for that. I've already lost it all."

She laughed too. "If you only knew!"

Seizing her wrists he tried to force the truth out of her (her skin is cold). "Why do you want to save me?"

And her eyes grew wistful again, her dry lips formed a sad smile. "Because you have to live."

"Right at this moment, I want anything but this," he confessed, loosening his hold a little.

"But you will survive, Sirius Black, and you will find me when the time comes."

It was only then that he noticed the little hourglass on her neck, and he knew – she really _was_ his ghost.

"I die in the future, don't I?"

"We all die, Sirius."

"And yet, you want me to live."

"I just hate tragic endings," and her smile was knowing and he knew that hers was just as tragic as his.

He looked at her lips then, drawing him in like a moth to a flame -when the world was shattering around him, the pieces of her were all that held him together. "Are you real?" He forced himself to look into her tortured eyes. She couldn't be real.

"I'm not," she said. "And this is the price I pay."

"Then I will buy it for you," he told her and kissed her, saw her melt into his arms (he didn't dare close his eyes like her).

"_Sirius Black_!" someone shouted from outside the cave.

"You have to come with me!" his beloved ghost said, as she wound the time-turner around his neck. He just stood uselessly, as she set the hourglass to some point in the future.

"What is your name?" he asked her.

She didn't reply, too focused on her task.

"_Sirius Black! Surrender yourself_!"

"This didn't happen in the original timeline, did it? How many things will you change if you take me with you?" Her silence was his answer. "Leave me here," he gently told her, prying the chain of the hourglass away from his neck.

Her eyes widened. "No! Sirius, you don't know how horrible Azkaban can be… you have no idea… yet," she finished in a gentle murmur, her voice catching. "Please…"

He gently caressed her cheeks with both of his hands. "You love me, don't you?" he said, looking into her time-shattered, world-weary eyes. How peculiar, there was still someone who loved him in this world, even if it was just a phantom. "Somewhere in the future I will see you."

"I won't be able to see you in Azkaban," she sobbed. "It will be another thirteen years, Sirius, before you are free again. And even then, you'll be cast away, enclosed between the walls of your home… and then…"

"_Sirius Black! This is your last chance_!"

"I will find you," he promised her. "Just tell me when."

She took a deep breath, steadying herself. "After your darkest hour…" she told him in a shaky voice. "After your darkest hour," she said again.

"Go back," he told her gently, nuzzling in her neck, seeking her warmth until suddenly she was there and then no more, and the Aurors were disarming him and carrying him by the wrists, to his personal hell.

He might as well have imagined the tears on his mouth (hers, not his) or the sand dust on his sleeve.

.

It was thirteen years later when he realized that when she had said 'hour', she was using a metaphor. His constant, his ghost, had actually meant his darkest 'decade'. He had gone mad and come back to sanity at least a hundred times before he saw her again.

She was all wrong though - different, far too young for him and far too bright for his weary eyes.

.

He dreamed of her once before the end.

"You were so whole when you were young," he told her. "What happened to you?"

She smiled wistfully at him (how could she still smile?) and her eyes conquered him. "I fell in love a ghost."

He took her hand in his. "I think I can relate."

She laid back on the grass, the ocean crushing its waves before them with a useless rage, a soundless wail. "Do you think we will find happiness?"

He looked to the red horizon. "Maybe in the place where the ocean meets the sky, we'll be able to meet too."

"I think I know of such a place."

.

Then the end comes, abrupt, unexpected and all too sudden.

_Do you hear the whispers, Harry?_

The veil gently takes him in his arms and with a sigh, he ends, to begin again.

.

He wakes up in the past, the not-so-distant past, where he is but a ghost. He wakes up and sees her, but she is still a child, she is still not his beloved ghost. Their eyes meet but then he blinks and he opens his eyes – she is older again, but still too _not_ _his_.

He suddenly realizes that this time it is him that haunts her, and she that falls in love with his ghost.

_She smiled wistfully at him (how could she still smile?) and her eyes conquered him. "I fell in love a ghost."_

"_Are you real?" He forced himself to look into her tortured eyes. She couldn't be real._

"_I'm not," she said. "This is the price I pay."_

.

He speaks to her only once.

She is crying alone in her room after his death, no one suspecting how important he had been to her.

"Why do you haunt me?" she asks and he smiles at the irony. "Why don't you haunt Harry or Remus? Why me? Why, before you even died?"

"I don't know," he honestly says. "You haunted me too, in _my_ past," he tells her. "Maybe we're soul mates."

Laying in her bed- so tiny and sad, he begins to see where her brokenness has started. "Soul mates don't exist, Sirius," she says softly. "You can't be real."

"I'm not," he says. "But I can try to stop haunting you, if you want me to."

She catches his cold hand, startled to see that he's real enough to touch. "Don't."

.

After this, the times he sees her are far-in-between for her. He watches her grow up, watches her fight in a war, watches her try to love someone else, watches her become an Unspeakable and watches her try to bring him back, watches her travel to his past and change his life.

Then he blinks, and he is on some kind of a shore, mists all around him but not thick enough to veil the ocean and the sun's rays meeting somewhere in the distant horizon, some sort of an unworldly light raising in between them, and a single boat on the shore.

She is next to him, as startled as him.

"I couldn't save you," she suddenly says. "I'm sorry, Sirius, I tried, I tried… why didn't you let me save you?" He takes her into his arms, not caring about his missed chance of salvation, not anymore. She remains silent for a minute. "You're so warm, Sirius."

"As are you," he tells her, breathing her in.

"I feel as though I've been freezing for years."

"But now you're warm, entirely real," he smiles, peaceful at last.

"Is this your dream, or mine?" she suddenly asks.

He laughs, feeling more lighthearted than in an eternity. "I think the dream has ended finally, my love." He kisses the top of her head. "Let's go to where the ocean and the sky meet."

Her hand in his, they are both brave enough for this journey.


End file.
